Former evangelical association leader to start new agency to promote environment, broader agenda

Richard Cizik, who was the main lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, has resurfaced on the national scene. He has formed a new organization and has a new job.

This follows remarks he made in a PBS interview in support of same-sex unions that riled the evangelical base he used to represent.Here’s a report about it from the Washington Post’s On Faith.Cizik and his departure from the NAE last December represent the shift among evangelicals once strongly united around traditional Republican politics and established conservative theology. Cizik described the evangelical community as a “slow moving earthquake” in the On Faith story. Cizik now works for the United Nations Foundation, which gives him far greater room to promote more of the global causes dear to him.His new organization, which isn’t yet named, isn’t designed to compete against the NAE, he said. It is to provide yet another way for “new evangelicals” to support the environment and antipoverty efforts among other causes.